Month: October 2017

Hello Everyone!

Sorry for the delay in putting up a post, as it has been a crazy, exciting week full of learning and special visitors or events!

DEVELOPING OUR MEDICAL EXPERTISE, UNIT WORK:

Everyone is done with their letters to the Human Body Corporation, and it was a great opportunity to learn about:

• Time-management skills and using class time appropriately
• Using our laptops, Google Drive, and Microsoft Word to type
• Specific information about an organ of the body and how it works with the other systems,
• How to find information and take notes while using non-fiction books and internet sites,
• How to write a business letter successfully, and
• What makes an effective public speaker!

Ms. D enjoyed hearing the first of our letters today, and tomorrow we will continue hearing more from the various organs of the body who are complaining about the Human Body Corporation’s plans to lay off employees! 

***I noticed during this activity some students need to practice their typing. May I suggest everyone take the time to practice BBC Dance Mat Typing at home, doing all of the levels? Students need to learn to type with two hands. The “hunt and peck method” just takes too long, and this will help them speed up their work process in class.

***I also noticed some students get easily distracted by noise. You are welcome to bring noise-cancelling headphones or use the earbuds, which are important to have for class, to listen to music if that helps you focus.

Now, we are learning about microbes, pathogens, diseases, and the immune system, including what we can do to protect ourselves from getting sick! Yesterday, we played a fun game called “Catch the DZ” in class to see what it is like to be an epidemiologist trying to figure out why a particular population is contracting a disease. Students were asked to read two articles on immunity and pathogens before Friday as we continue to talk about this topic.

Last week, Patricia’s grandfather came in to speak with us about his work as a neurologist, and we learned some amazing facts about the anatomy of the brain! Thank you to Patricia and her family for helping us make that connection! After Thanksgiving, next Friday, we will have a group of Community Health nurses coming to make a presentation about their roles in helping educate others about how to stay healthy!

MATH:

Continuing our work on Crunching the Data, we worked on median, mode, mean, and range and talked about how these can help us find the data that is most “representative” of an answer to a question we could ask in a survey or data-gathering experiment!

Students are also learning about and can practice at home:

• How to read decimals and place values appropriately (tenths, hundredths, thousandths),
• How to add, subtract, and multiply decimals (and divide, for those who are ready), 
• How to represent parts of whole using decimals, fractions, or percents, and
• How to use fractions to represent the chance of something happening, or the probability.

Tonight students are working on some probability questions for 15 minutes only. Tomorrow, we are going to play a version of Deal or No Deal to practice our fractions and probability thinking. Here are some websites you can use to practice the things we are doing in class, only if you need it:

• Games to practice Decimals (Adding, Subtracting, Multiplying, etc.)
• Adding Subtracting Decimals on Math is Fun  (We practiced this already)
• Multiplying Decimals on Math is Fun  (We went over this today)
• Dividing Decimals on Math is Fun  (for those who are ready, more advanced)
• Convert Decimals to Fractions (we are still working on this, but for those ready)
• Basic Probability Math is Fun  (for everyone)
• Probability Independent Events (for those who are ready, more advanced)

Your Median/Mode/Mean handout should have been finished by now. The Graphing Handout has been marked and turned in. Please check your red math folder. We are also keeping math notes as we go in our JOURNALS.

FRENCH!

Today, we started up our French program. We will be doing French typically twice a week for thirty minutes on Monday and Thursday, although sometimes more often. 

French Immersion Students are currently working in the book Eureka Le corps humain by Scholastic. It is all in French and the exercises, experiments, and questions are all in French. Students will be reading the text, responding to questions, and writing answers in French in their journals. During the year, Ms. D will be looking for texts to connect with our units and that are written, like this one, at the grade 4/5 French level. Lucky for us, the District Library has some French Immersion resources to use! Up next, some readers on a variety of cool science topics! Thank you to the French Immersion students for diving into this work today.

All other students will be working on Core French through three resources:

• Web Resources: Students need to practice saying their French alphabet and be able to say it to me by the end of October with correct pronunciation. You can practice it here.   We will also be reviewing basic numbers in French, the body parts, and foods. To do this, we will be using French-Games.net which has minimal ads and does a good job of organizing lessons. Students may do more than the assigned sections if they wish. They will go through all parts of the lessons using earbuds in class. Then, they take the online quiz during class time and show it to me when done.
• Book Resource, Activie 1 Bonne Collation, Bonne Nutrition: This book will provide us with basic French phrases and prompts around food and health related to our unit. Again, the idea is we will be quizzed on aspects of this by the end of October/early November.
• Book Resource, Activie 1 Au Jeu: This book will provide some basic conversational French phrases for us to practice together in class.

Students will be taking notes in their journals about French and can study this at home.

FREE CHOICE FRIDAY:

If you would like to share a game with your peers, please bring a board game to school tomorrow. It will need to be a game with a shorter timeframe, not Monopoly or Settlers of Catan, as those games are much too long for our Free Choice time. The idea is to observe and to play some new games as inspiration for our end-of-unit game project coming up soon.

CARIBOU CONTEST:

The past two years, we have participated in the Math Contest called Caribou. The first competition is for free for all students, and it takes place at school (must be done from a school computer) on October 18th and 19th. After the first competition, students in grade four may continue for free; however, grade five and up pay a fee. We will all participate in the first competition, and you can go to the website to practice and learn about the competition details prior to the competition!

This competition is completely optional after the first one. We do not use the results or work on this competition in any way toward marks for students. We do this for fun only!

FSA:

We will begin the grade four only FSA process tomorrow. Should you want to practice, please do so here. You will need your PEN that I provided to you in class.

HAVE A GREAT THANKSGIVING WEEKEND!!!!!

Ms. D